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If phpBB gave people the opportunity to use their donations to help determine the social importance of different ideas it wouldn't solve the free-rider problem. But it would solve the immense problem of development being driven by popularity rather than by value.
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Again ... you are implying that the value of something is a priori linked to a monetary "value". It is not because people are willing to pay for something that it is worth paying for. Economically speaking more money is transfered into the (hard) drugs industry, than into the production of aspirine. Here 's a clear case of a "philantropic" minority winning the value argument against the man on the street majority.

Donations to phpBB ? No problem with that, as long as it's used to pay for costs (e.g.hardware, software, hosting, travel to conventions), but not to decide which idea will be implemented and which won't.

If phpBB gave people the opportunity to use their donations to help determine the social importance of different ideas

So the "social importance" of something is determined by the amount of money few are willing to spend? Foolowing your logic and arguments a few steps further into their consequences: The more momey a single person/some few persons donates, the more likely his interests will materialize - you don't bite the hand that feeds you.

This would allow us to simultaneously and directly compare what is most important to voters and what is most important to donors.

Whom would you follow in case of potential donation (= money) versus voting? What do both groups have to do with importance, moreover: with "social" importance? What about those these "donations" will determine what is to be considered of importance for them?

To be frank: there are some points in the direction phpBB is inteted to develop I don't fully agree with. But at lleast those decissions are not driven and put through by financial considerations or, worse, interests.

Again: what is this "social importance" you keep talking abaout all the time? How could this ever be measured by the amount of donations by still a few - compared with the number of those who, in the end, will be affected?
Define your buzz word, define the relations between those you want to gain influence, the influencing factor "money", the decissions to be made ... ad those bearing the impacts of these decissions.
Most of all: define a system of checks and balances.

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If phpBB gave people the opportunity to use their donations to help determine the social importance of different ideas it wouldn't solve the free-rider problem. But it would solve the immense problem of development being driven by popularity rather than by value.
...

Again ... you are implying that the value of something is a priori linked to a monetary "value". It is not because people are willing to pay for something that it is worth paying for. Economically speaking more money is transfered into the (hard) drugs industry, than into the production of aspirine. Here 's a clear case of a "philantropic" minority winning the value argument against the man on the street majority.

Donations to phpBB ? No problem with that, as long as it's used to pay for costs (e.g.hardware, software, hosting, travel to conventions), but not to decide which idea will be implemented and which won't.

But again as well... you're implying that the value/importance/relevance of something is a priori linked to the number of voters. Like I said though, we can simultaneously have both systems. People can vote for ideas and donate to them. Then we can compare the results. If spam protection receives a lot of votes and donations... then both systems indicate that it is socially important. If smilies receive a lot of votes but few donations... then we'll have to figure out which system to believe.

Perhaps it will help to consider another example... Netflix. Subscribers pay to have unlimited access to the content and they vote (thumbs up) for their favorite content. But for me personally, in some cases... when I really love a show, a vote is woefully inadequate to express my love. I want the opportunity to spend my subscription dollars on the shows that I love the most. In no case does it truly benefit me for my love to remain hidden from others. Content creators really aren't heart or mind readers. If I don't express my love then creators won't know it. And if they don't know it then it can't influence their content creation decisions.

What you're essentially saying is that it's ok for people to use their donations to show their love for phpBB... but it's not ok for people to use their donations to show their love for specific parts of phpBB. Except what is phpBB itself if not a specific part of a larger whole? Why does it matter if people have different amounts of love for PhpBB, Linux and Wikipedia? It matters because it reveals how society wants its limited time and talent to be divided between these three parts. If Wikipedia is more beloved (socially important) than Linux, then Wikipedia should logically use more of society's limited resources than Linux. The result will be a more lovable whole.

What's true of PhpBB, Linux and Wikipedia is also true of the parts of PhpBB. The more loved parts should logically use more of society's limited resources than the less loved parts. The result will be a more lovable PhpBB.

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But again as well... you're implying that the value/importance/relevance of something is a priori linked to the number of voters.

Nope, I only pointed out a simple example showing how easy it is to misunderstand the principle of "value". How value is determined, is an important question (and: by donations is the wrong answer).
Anyway, I've got a forum to upgrade in my spare time instead of discussing donations which I value lower than revitalising my board.

I think it would take less time to actually learn PHP and effect those changes than wait for this debate to produce anything of value.

I already wrote the basic code. But it won't do much good if the community doesn't see the point in using their donations to express their specific preferences.

Then why not simply release it to the CDB on here to get it validated? I'm sure the community of this public good would be appreciative of your efforts.

In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists - Eric HofferFormer Modifications/Extensions Team Member | My extensions
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I already wrote the basic code. But it won't do much good if the community doesn't see the point in using their donations to express their specific preferences.

I read the whole topic since the begin I can say, my opinion is:
it is leading to nowhere, rounding in circles, you are beating a dead horse.. "so to speak". Don't take offence of it pls. I mean, your idea and efforts to explain it are by my side appreciated and understood but..
all of this IMHO will not see the light of the sun - as a core code implementation - trust me together with all of the others who already said that, right or wrong. And yes, as an extension could be appreciated by the crowd, especially because involves moneys (see Paypal extension or the likes). As a suggestion (already taken) I will tell you: post it into the extensions in development forum and please use GitHub, we will see.

Elias, RMcGirr83 and 3Di, I'm not sure that we're on the same page. The code that I wrote takes data from a Google sheet and displays it on a webpage. Programming really isn't my area of expertise so I'm sure that the code is pretty terrible. Most of the bits were taken from online tutorials. Surprisingly, at the time, I didn't manage to find any code written that did exactly what I wanted.

As I said earlier in this thread my friend teaches 5th grade. Her class has a blog.... Classtopia. That page displays a list of blog entries from this public Google sheet. Here's the code...

PhpBB could use this same exact system for idea valuations. Of course the data would have to be manually entered into the Google sheet. And obviously it would be better to have a fully automated system.

So this is what I meant when I said that I wrote the basic code for the system that I'm talking about.

Elias, RMcGirr83 and 3Di, I'm not sure that we're on the same page. The code that I wrote takes data from a Google sheet and displays it on a webpage. Programming really isn't my area of expertise so I'm sure that the code is pretty terrible.

There is the "extension writers forum" for help writing extensions, there is also the "extension requests forum" where to ask for an extension to be made using your idea, if you can't/will write one yourself.

3Di, the micropayments phpBB forum and the donor-driven development idea are two different, but related, ideas. Sorry about the confusion.

The micropayments thing essentially put coin buttons at the bottom of each post. When people would click the coin buttons the valuation of the post would increase accordingly and the money would be taken from their wallet. This would allow people to sort threads and posts by their value. But I never got around to coding the sort. It was really hard for me to slog through all the code. I realized that it would be far less hassle to keep it simple and separate the valuation from the forum.

The Google sheet approach essentially accomplishes the same thing of being able to easily and quickly find the most valuable content. Of course the drawback is that the data has to be manually entered into the sheet.

Ideally there should be a super basic phpBB that is really easy to modify. Then people with intermediate programming skills could easily use the basic phpBB to test out different ideas. It would have been so much easier to use a basic phpBB to test out the micropayments idea.

Would creating a super basic phpBB be difficult? Rather than go through the current phpBB and tear out all the non-essential stuff, I'm guessing it would be a lot easier to simply build a basic phpBB from scratch. Unfortunately I don't have the skills to do that. I do have the skills to tear out all the non-essential stuff from the current phpBB but that would take a really long time.

I would like to be a bit more clear:
your "idea" isn't compatible to the phpBB's leit-motiv and the more you beat the nail the more it will not be (it doesn't matter how many replies or what not.. here), there will be not a "light phpBB" as well, since the current phpBB is already the lighter (ATM) version available that could be, that's why extensions exist and have been made for. Please stop beating a dead horse. You may/might - alternatively - choose a different BB for your envision. There is nothing more to say since everything has been already said IMHO. I give up, I've got something else to do.